Word Saucery

Anyone who has attended my Online Programme or attended one of my writing retreats, workshops or courses over the years, or read my book, Hypnotic Journaling, will know that, for me, the writing process begins with what I call ‘Letting Go.’

When you let go of the unhelpful stuff, all the mental chatter circulating in your head,  all those thoughts and doubts about not being able to write, never being ‘good enough,’ the internal critic, unhelpful internal readers, as well as all those other unsupportive narratives about yourself and writing, when you let go of all that - and that is a lot of stuff - something magical begins to happen.

You make space for possibility, playfulness, words, words, words to flow onto the page.

You don’t need to feel very relaxed or ‘in the right mood’ to begin this process. One of the biggest and possiby most unhelpful writing narratives going is that writers are people who feel inspired every day, who sit down calmly and serenely at their desk in the mood for writing.

Speak to any writer and they’ll tell you that the most important thing is simply to keep showing up for writing; to get into some kind of rhythm, whether at a desk or walking the dog or in those precious moments before the children wake up, and just start writing. Write anything.

Natalie Goldberg calls it ‘keeping the hand moving.’ Julia Cameron calls it ‘morning pages.’ My friend, the writer Sarah Salway,  has a very helpful round-up on her blog today of her own creative practice. Sarah describes her daily process as ‘forgetting the set of rules which tell you that there is only one way to write.’ I like that.

I call my own daily practice Letting Go. I also sometimes refer to it as ‘free writing.’ In the same way that free running is all about reclaiming public space, jumping from building to building, making shapes with your body, joining things up, my early morning writing practice is about reclaiming the page. For me. Daily.

Sometimes the words that emerge turn into poems. Very often they just run on into more writing: Oh, yes… that is what I really wanted to say… and this… and this…

If I don’t allow myself the space to let go, space for the not-writing writing, then I feel cramped, stifled, unable to say anything.

My friend, the poet Meryl Pugh, talks about her daily writing practice here too, on her blog. She even includes some of the ‘discarded bits’ that didn’t make the poem she’s currently making - but were nevertheless a crucial part of that making process.

By the way, someone at a workshop once asked me if I thought blogs were a kind of free-writing. My answer was and still is ‘no.’

Many writers now have blogs. They make fascinating reading, offering tantalising glimpses into creative processes. One of my favourites is by the poet, Mark Doty, who captures experiences, pictures, imprints, a way of looking at the world which I  very much enjoy reading.

However, writing in a blog, although it may be enriching for your readers, is not the same as free-writing into the private space of the page, reclaiming a piece of physical space and time as yours and only yours, allowing words to emerge any old way and any new how. Freed from the expectations of external readers, you can  begin to develop a special kind of internal reader for yourself, a reader who waits and watches and acknowledges, patiently and kindly… whatever happens.

Because there will probably always be some kind of reader or reading going on inside your mind, so if you can make that reader a kind, helpful, supportive character, who is willing to stand aside and gently observe as you get on with the process of experimenting, writing, making ‘mistakes,’ writing, playing around with words, you might be surprised to notice what happens.

And that’s Letting Go.

The above two items are entirely unrelated - except if I allow myself to show off for a moment and mention that Simon Armitage once shortlisted me for the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition.

Last night, the lovely Mr Armitage came to Easingwold, a small village north of York where my family live, and gave a witty, moving and thoroughly entertaining reading. There are surprisingly few poets around who can read and talk about their poems  in exciting and engaging ways. But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at that.

Some poems - certainly lots of mine! - work best surrounded by silence, in the still white holding space of the page. And, after all, as Simon himself pointed out, lots of writers choose to be writers because they like to spend most of their time sitting at home at their desks on their own, in privacy. Who says that they should be good at reading their work to others? But it is a real treat when you get the opportunity to sit back and be read to by someone who is really good at doing it.

And one of the things that I love about working with people during my Online Programme in Creative Writing for Personal Development, Health amd Well Being is the feeling of being read to. People work on something in progress and share it with us in the workshop forums and over the six months of the programme, I begin to get a real sense of their developing voice. I begin to really hear them in their writing.

I am now preparing for my next Programme, which begins on 9 October.

We have a lovely group of people enrolled on the course - and there’s still room for more, if you’d like to join us.

I like the flexibility of working with people in this way. We can enjoy conference calls together and also access different parts of the Programme at the times that are right for us. I can adapt parts of the course as we go to suit the emerging interests of the group. And we always have such a wonderful range of people from different parts of the world and different interests and backgrounds.

So, I’m looking forward to October.

In the meantime, Simon Armitage said last night that he thinks every poet should practise writing ‘the definitive  poem about their home town.’ I think that’s an interesting idea, to write about your idea of home or the place where you live or grew up. It’s something that fits well with the idea of writing as a process of discovery or journeying or development. I’d better get writing.